Budleigh Past and Present

I learnt recently that a visit to Fairlynch is being planned for local schoolchildren. They’re keen to find out about World War Two, so naturally I investigated what our museum might have in the way of things to look at and study. Various items are listed in the records, including a gas mask, a helmet, a stirrup pump, a ration book, and loads of photos, all stored away and waiting to be shown off to visitors. One rather fine item which is not listed – I found it on the internet – is a copy of this ship’s crest, currently for sale on Ebay but at a specially discounted price for Fairlynch after an approach was made to the owner.  The image is of a parrot or popinjay perc hed on a trident. The ship in question was HMS Polruan, a Bangor-class minesweeper launched on 18 July 1940. Bangor-class warships were named after HMS Bangor, and all Royal Navy ships of that class were named after British coastal towns. During WW2 many...

    The Temple Church in Redcliffe, Bristol, founded in the mid-12th century, was bombed in November 1940 during the Bristol Blitz. More than 80 years later it still stands as a ruin  When I was born, in 1946, the Second World War had only just finished but my childish memories of its impact are still vivid. Rationing wasn’t completely abolished for another eight years. I think I remember car parks in Bristol which seemed to have been made out of enormous bomb craters.   And some parents had vivid stories to tell: my mother seemed to have enjoyed her times in the WRNS, in safety in Scotland, while, disturbingly my father told atrocious stories of how he and his tank crew had dealt with the Japanese in Burma.   Other parents, of course, never spoke of those days.     I never tired of endless WW2 films and devoured books of PoW escape stories. Though that may have been my own escapism from a succession o...

    The madness of war: A Swiss shepherd watches a battle on the frontier during World War I from the 1915 edition of Some ‘Frightful’ War Pictures by the celebrated illustrator William Heath Robinson (1872-1944)  Museums up and down the country - indeed throughout the world - will have been bringing their resources to bear on exhibitions marking the centenary of World War I. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron announced last October that more than £50m has been allocated for a historic commemoration of the centenary of the start of the conflict. The hunt is still on at Fairlynch Museum for Great War stories with a link to Budleigh Salterton or any of the villages of the Lower Otter Valley. Those stories based on experiences of active service are naturally of keen interest, particularly when they reveal private thoughts at variance with the official views promoted by the Government’s propaganda machine...